This final report describes the Technology Assessment Software Package (TASP) Project, which produced developmentally appropriate technology assessment software for children from 18 months through 8 years of age who have moderate to severe disabilities that interfere with their interaction with people, objects, tasks, and events in their…

This study investigated whether a person with profound mental retardation could effectively learn specific requests using two different communication modes, both including the same set of graphic symbols. It also sought to compare whether the participant showed a preference for one modality over the other and to determine whether the participant…

This study investigated whether grade six students' self-esteem could be affected by the presentation of a selected stimulus below the threshold of conscious awareness via the medium of a specially prepared paper. It also investigated whether any statistically significant differences existed between the effects on self-esteem of a selected…

Previous research has demonstrated that bizarre imagery facilitates long-term recall of noun pairs. A study investigated the effects of bizarreness when more pronounced delays were used. Subjects, 40 introductory psychology students from Illinois Benedictine College, were shown 30 plausible and 30 bizarre scenes at a viewing distance of…

The paper discusses a number of issues concerning the practical usefulness of cognitive psychology research, and presents a case study of pilot training methods to illustrate a model of research processes that produces outcomes which contribute to both basic and applied research goals. Research studies are described as varying in the degree to…

A study investigated whether a visual selective attention deficit with its presumed basis in slow visual processing referred to the same phonological recoding deficit, or whether they were two independent sources of reading disability. Subjects were children aged 7 to 15 referred to a university clinic (the Waterloo Child Assessment…

Individual differences in perceptual information processing were tested using 327 ten year old children, with verbal tasks representing successive information processing and spatial tasks representing simultaneous information processing. Three sets of tasks, (1) visual/reconstruction (V/R), (2) visual/verbal (V/VL), and (3) verbal/reconstruction…

This paper describes seven interrelated studies concerned with children's understanding of sequential actions and with the effects of observing a model on this understanding. A total of 546 elementary and secondary school students served as subjects for the studies. The tasks for all of the studies involved deriving the pattern for a sequence from…

Teaching machines and programed instruction represent new methods in education, but they are based on teaching principles established before the development of media technology. Today programed learning materials based on the new technology enjoy increasing popularity for several reasons: they apply sound psychological theories; the materials can…

Under the sponsorship of the National Project in Agricultural Communications, a series of 14 lessons by various authors has been compiled to serve as a reader or training manual in the field of visual communications. Several models of communications are outlined and evaluated. Many studies which concern themselves with the concepts of source,…

The Cultural Attitude Scales represent a modular approach to the measurement of cultural attitudes and knowledge with respect to the Puerto Rican, Anglo-American, and Black-American cultures. They are applicable to programs which propose to enhance ethnic identity or cross-cultural understanding among any one or more of these three ethnic groups.…

The question of whether pupil diameter indicates information processing load during reading was investigated in three experiments involving 24 college students reading passages of varying difficulty. A TV camera and monitor, together with a video-recorder, were used to measure the diameter of the pupil under a reading condition and under three…

The ETS Matched Pictures test was used in the longitudinal study to measure children's comprehension of certain grammatical features, such as past and future tenses, negation and prepositions. The task materials for both I and II consist of a set of cards, with each card having a pair of black and white pictures. Both pictures in a pair contain…

Practical information for using a variety of pictures in the geography classroom is provided. Although pictures which depict cultural and natural landscape conditions are readily available, the methods by which pictures should be used in the classroom to produce the greatest impact on learning need to be carefully considered by the teacher. This…

The leisure preferences of a seven-year-old boy with severe mental retardation were systematically analyzed through the application of a computerized assessment procedure. A switch-activated microcomputer and a computer program designed to interpret the switch activations enabled the boy to choose among three leisure activities: auditory, visual,…